Text boxes (again)

[MarionSh]

Text boxes are still driving me crazy. As well as the problems which have been mentioned on many other threads, since moving to 2.5 I find that new text boxes are automatically incredibly wide - the text just keeps going until you hit the enter key. I'm sure they weren't like this before 2.5. I'd much rather not put hard returns in my text boxes - they are a pian when you resize the text or text-box.
I'd love to be able to drag a text box to the size I wnat and then just type.

I'm trying to encourage my fellow teachers to create more of their own flipcharts, but the idosynchrocies of text boxes is really putting them off! How do others get round the problems - is it a case of cut 'n pasting from Word? (this sometimes results in formatting problems).

Typing in symbols and fractions is also tedious - they can be hard to find and do not have same font as text being typed.
I'd like to type 1 / 2 and it automatically convert it to 1/2 as in Word.

[Dave Harrington]

That reminds me of something I've meant to ask about that always bothers me. If I create a text box with say a single digit in it, the box created is small - just what I want. But if I edit the number - usually having duplicated the box several times, to change the digit, the width becomes massive - which is very frustrating if I am using a coloured background for the text box. Is this a bug? is it meant to happen (and has it been fixed and I need a later version?):(

[MarionSh]

Dave,
I too find this very annoying - when I try to make the text box smaller the size becomes massive again when it gets to be near the single digit. Frustrating or what! It must be a bug - no-one would want it to do that.
The whole area of text boxes need a massive overhaul (hopefully already well under way) otherwise only the truely Promethean-dedicated (or mad?) user will make flipcharts.
Will version 3 be the answer?

[Margaret Allen]

Marion,

I will find out whether V3 is the answer.... but don't think that this "issue" will preclude people from making flipcharts as otherwise there wouldn't be any up on Planet :D

[Nigel Pearce]

The issue you describe is a bug which has unfortunately crept in within the latest release of v2.5.

This issue is fixed and will be available in the next maintenance release of v2.5.

Regarding text objects in v3. A fair amount of work has gone into improving the text edit experience generally, all of which should help to address many of your concerns.
I cannot comment more here, except to say that engineering are monitoring this forum and V3 is being steered by much of what we are reading on here.

Thanks for your feedback.

[MarionSh]

Margaret, Nigel,
Thanks for your comments, glad to hear that we can look forward to some improvements in V3.
Margaret - in my experience the 'issues' with text boxes certainly put people off making flipcharts. I have encouraged my fellow teachers to be more adventurous with their own flipcharts - but several have become so frustrated with text boxes that they only do the bare minimu. I show them all sorts of ways that text boxes can be used to reveal/highlight text etc but it is often quite fiddly to do that only those with real enthusiasm for making flipcharts persevere. Fortunately AS2 is so good that there are plenty of us enthusiasts about.

[kjhanafin]

Hi All,

I'm kind of new to this game but I don't use text boxes at all. I just write using the pen. I then group the text. This allows me to scale the "text" easily without the complexities of real text boxes -- text wrapping and font sizing and such.

Am I missing something important that text boxes do better?

Karl

[Dave Harrington]

Depends on how good your handwriting is!;)

And I'm sure there aren't many of us who can write well using a mouse - so if you don't have a prep pad, and you need to prepare "away" from the board, text boxes seem the only answer.

There's probably lots of other reasons, bet this is what sprang to mind for me..

[MarionSh]

Karl,
I don't usually create text boxes during lessons, but my preprepared flipcharts are full of them. I can't see you're getting the most out of your board without using them.

One way I do create text boxes during a lesson, is to freeze the projector and then type up a text box (instructions, questions, etc) then unfreeze for the children to see (can be useful to type up answers to their maths questions). I once had a projector without a freeze function which was awful!

[kjhanafin]

Marion,

Thanks for the tip on the freeze button... I always wondered when I might use that... I'll try it.

I guess I forgot to mention that I use an ActivePanel to prepare flps which might explain no text boxes. If I had to write with a mouse it would be problematic.

Karl

[Rosie MacAlpine]

I'd wondered if I can do that - now I'm rushing off to find the freeze button on my projector!:D

[jtw521]

Not sure if this was put on the "increasingly frustrated" thread (actually I couldn't find it to check!) ...


If I paste a large amount of text onto a flipchart and then want to format it, I am unable to scroll down within the text box beyond the end of the flipchart page. I have to either;

change font so all is visible, format then re-size the font , or

do it in a couple of goes ie format the top come out of the text box scroll down and then go back in and format the bottom.

If already raised, sorry. Looking forward to seeing V3.0, it looks like a massive step forward, well done.